With Splatoon 3 right around the corner, and the Splatfest World Premiere taking place on 27th August, fans are more eager than ever to find out how the third ink-fest will play online. And prominent dataminer @OatmealDome has discovered that the upcoming game will be utilising a new in-house server system for online lobbies (thanks, Go Nintendo!).
This means that Splatoon 3 is now the third game to use NPLN, Nintendo's in-house server system, after Monster Hunter Rise and Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Both previous Splatoon games used NEX, a system that originated on the 3DS and powered a few launch apps like your Friends List.
While this will largely be used to enhance some of the game's new Lobby features, it will help improve some aspects of matchmaking, which will assist in the series's peer-to-peer play. NPLN will attempt to match based on player latency and can act as a go-between if two consoles can't connect due to the NAT types. OatmealDome goes into more detail in the Twitter thread below.
But that's not all that's coming to Splatoon 3. According to OatmealDome, it looks like the game will be using AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 — which was most recently used in Nintendo Switch Sports. This upscaling technology uses spatial upscaling, which uses data captured in the current frame, and as a result, can improve in-game performance and framerate while ensuring the game looks as smooth as possible.
- Further reading - Nintendo Could Be Using AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution To Boost Switch Performance
Those are good improvements for Splatoon 3, then! The server system seems to have worked wonders for Monster Hunter in particular, and hopefully, AMD FidelityFX will keep those Tricolor Turf Wars under control. The test will be next Saturday when the Splatfest World Premiere occurs!
Splatoon 3 launches on 9th September, so make sure you grab that free demo to prepare for the first Splatfest!
What do you think about the server news? Do you hope there are other improvements to Splatoon's online play? Let us know!
[source twitter.com, via gonintendo.com]
Comments 32
Just make it so that you can save game data to the server and download it to another system. Thanks.
That's curious, the 3D artwork previously revealed as the Home Menu Icon has been updated to illustrate the three-way Turf War.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/07/heres-your-first-look-at-splatoon-3s-home-menu-icon-for-nintendo-switch
Before, it was just blue and yellow, no red.
I guess they were being careful not to spoil this change before last week's Splatoon Direct!
Sorta related. But it annoys me so much that not every Nintendo game lets you cloud save. Honestly what’s the point of paying for a service when some of the most important games that tend to have a lot of progress, don’t even let you save it to the cloud?
So annoying.
@__jamiie they did confirm that in the direct, didn't they (cloud saving enabled for the first time)
I wonder why they use FidelityFX (1.0 which is the old one) instead of DLSS that the Nvidia chip also does support?
(EDIT: ok I know now it does not support DLSS, I thought the Tegra did, which I found strange because you need Tensor cores for that)
@Snatcher I hate that too, it is annoying.
@Rayquaza2510 I don't think the Tegra X1 chip supports DLSS
@Rayquaza2510 It's because the chip despite being Nvidia does not support DLSS. The AMD is open source and the FidelityFX 1.0 supports older chips.
But hopefully it is a trend we can look forward to the Super Switch or Switch 2 or whatever that they should be utilizing upscaling technology and hopefully the new DLSS which is great.
FidelityFX is going to give the Switch a second wind (not that it needs one hahah!) I wonder if BotW2 will use it too.
@Rayquaza2510 DLSS only works with RTX GPUs. Specifically, GPUs with tensor (AI) cores. FSR 1.0 and 2.0 on the other hand will theoretically work with any GPU.
@Zyph FSR even works on NVIDA GPU's.
I have RTX 3070, so i use DLSS and Ray Tracing in games supporting it.
My other gaming PC have GTX 1660 Super which have CUDA cores, but have the newer "Turing" architecture for performance boost.
@GrailUK I think it's more likely that breath of the wild 2 was delayed a second time because the new hardware is being developed and they're going to make it work with both.
@romanista @__jamiie yep, that was confirmed.
@blockfight @romanista Well that's a massive relief. There was no rational reason for it not to be in Splatoon 2.
@Jokerwolf I think it will mostly be down to their creative process and they thought of some more stuff to improve the game. They will happily delay a game for such stuff.
@RupeeClock good shout. I also love that they concealed this until the direct.
@GrailUK I think it might be multiple things not just one thing. It's been known for some time that they're making some hardware that hasn't been announced that's still in development. It is most assuredly a next Gen. Switch.
@romanista yes eshop page already confirms that cloud saving is supported for the game only for offline data but it's still supported
P2P multiplayer, where exactly are the NSO fees going?
I'd actually never heard about this. For a second, I was hoping it was dedicated servers. If WB can have dedicated servers for Multiversus, Nintendo can make it happen too.
@__jamiie I lost all my Splatoon 2 stuff after migrating to a new Switch. That and Animal Crossing are gone to me now which hurts so bad. Guess I can start over with part 3 now that I have a brand new Switch, but not having a normal cloud save for these games is nuts.
@Shredderlovespizza
Same story here. Lost it when upgrading from regular model to OLED model. At least I only lost my Splatoon 2 save and not the other games I have that also don’t support cloud saves (Dark Souls, Pokémon Sword etc.). I replayed the single player modes (including Octo Expansion) but with 3 just around the corner it seems pointless to try and level up in multiplayer again.
@Jokerwolf Don't get me wrong, I'm buying a next gen Switch in a heartbeat. But I don't think it's going to be announced anytime this year. And a March realease for a new console on the back of a successful one is nuts. (Remember, the Wii U was dead. I don't think March release date should be taken as a new norm.)
@AcridSkull I'll be the one doing the logical answer: Fees go into development of Emulators for the Switch Online apps, Tetris 99, Pac-Man 99, management of servers (such as matchmaking), development of NEX and NPLN client/server library lol
(I know the point I'm not defending the lack of dedicated servers.)
For more context about NPLN: NPLN was used in Monster Hunter Rise first, then the library finally got finalized earlier this year.
The problem though is that Monster Hunter's network team is essentially god so it's actually hard to judge NPLN.
Also while NPLN brings better server/client systems to developers, it does not magically make game netcode better. For all we know, the netcode in Splatoon 3 could be very bad and outside of the fault of the libraries being used.
Pia is the peer-to-peer library which can be used in conjuction with NPLN, and I personally think P2P is not necessarily a bad thing but it needs to be used properly.
So while this news is definitely more exciting, it might not necessarily fix connection issues...
@GrailUK Seems very likely! I remember Digital Foundry pondering over how the Switch was doing some fancy stuff with clouds or something in more receny BotW 2 footage a few months back. That might explain how.
@__jamiie That was already confirmed. It wasn't in Animal Crossing due to the weird way saves work in that game (being linked to multiple profiles) and it didn't work on Splatoon 2 due to the level and rank being part of the save, to prevent people downloading an old save if their rank gets lowered.
Can we stop talking about upscaling technology as something used to "boost performance"? Thank you.
That's probably the only reason Splatoon 3 exists, honestly. (I mean, we would've gotten one eventually, but I doubt it would have been on the same console.) To take advantage of their improved online infrastructure.
@twadebarcelona I hadn't seen the direct but it's great news to see it included. They absolutely could have implemented it in Splatoon 2 though if they'd wanted to.
@__jamiie It wasn't in the Direct.
As for Splatoon 2, it would have required rewriting the save system from what they'd already made, which could have broken saves if implemented.
What a rip-off, obviously they should have added NPLN-only matchmaking features and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 as a free update to Splatoon 2. It's easy
I personally never had any issues with 2's online (in fact, it's probably one of the only games that actually runs decently on those servers along with Mario Kart), but seeing such an online-heavy game get the better servers (especially when they've worked so well for MH:Rise) is absolutely fantastic. Keep putting this new server on your new games thank you (you wouldn't think that would have to be said.....).
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